Et tu Barra?

"One final thing. If you have a young one getting ready to graduate from high school and wondering what to major in, tell that young person battery technology. This will not be where all the action will be, but it will be hot for years."

The company who made my truck and my wife's car, the company who, not that many years ago, was at death's door, and needed to have a massive government bailout - has suddenly popped up on the President's radar - big time. Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, in the middle of the Trump red hot economy, caught just about everyone looking the other way. General Motors announced it was going to let 14,000 workers go, and shut down five plants in the US of A. That unexpected move went over like a gas pain in church with President Trump. Or was it unexpected? Wall Street analysts should have seen this one coming as clearly as a low hanging fast ball. Why? GM has not been secretive about how they perceive the future. What they want to do. How they want to reshape the company. In fact in March of 2016, GM announced they were acquiring Cruise Automation of San Francisco for $1B. Why? They wanted a leg up on making new line of autonomous vehicles by 2025. Step one for GM - let the dogs out. Get rid of them. Some of the models GM is getting rid of, are the Cruze, the Impala, and the Cadillac XTS. The biggest surprise to me however, was to see the Chevy Volt get the deep six. What happened with GM's first electric car? I mean, GM wants to expand its EV (electric vehicle) foot print. My view? It was to soon. The market and the technology were not ready for the Volt. It developed a reputation for being an expensive dog, and sales plummeted. So bye-bye Volt - you are about to be replaced with something better and more market ready. A market guru might be looking at this situation and shrug shoulders. "So what? Many companies do some re-tooling to meet the future." True. So what is the big hairy deal then? Why is this a burr under the President's saddle? I mean, the Chevy Cruze has really been a dog looking for a home. Getting rid of the Cruise was a move whose time had come. But there is more to this story. Trump is not a fan of the EV. Probably even less of a fan of the autonomous EV. Here we are, after suffering through eight years of Obama trying to kill our coal and oil industry, finally becoming a world exporter of energy. What could rain on our new parade with us now being the Saudi of North America? The EV. So the President is not a fan. He is also royally pissed that when the auto industry started going south in 2008, Ford was able to fix itself. GM however, was at the head of the line with its hand out for government help. Once help was given to "save all those jobs", many renamed GM to be "Government Motors". Well here is the bottom line. I have addressed this before. We are coming to the sunset of the internal combustion engine. Just about every car manufacturer have an EV line on the drawing boards. I have said many times my Avalanche might be the last internal combustion vehicle I own. My young grand kids might not ever drive a car. The future is coming, and coming at blazing speed. One final thing. If you have a young one getting ready to graduate from high school and wondering what to major in, tell that young person battery technology. This will not be where all the action will be, but it will be hot for years. How many years? Until we figure out go to market fuel cell solutions. Buckle up!